Roadmap day! 

Happy end of the month to all our community members as today we reach the final day of April, and like we say every month, these last four weeks have flown by in something of a flash – with plenty of rFactor 2 flavoured goodies having been deployed to the simulation, and plenty of very exciting and rewarding things happening in the very near future. 

Aside from the fact that May usually marks the traditional start of the warmer weather season in much of Europe, which always helps lift the mood somewhat, the next few weeks also look like being rather good ones for rFactor 2 players, with plenty happening here at Studio 397 HQ in our ongoing development of the simulation. 

Motorsport Games Acquisition

While we announced the impending purchase of Studio 397 and rFactor 2 by our friends at Motorsport Games back in March, these last few weeks have been a whirlwind of sorting through the legal aspects of the transaction, arranging contracts and generally working through all that a deal of this magnitude entails. We appreciate that many of you will be keen to find out more about what this arrangement will mean for the future of rFactor 2 and the many new projects we will be working on with Motorsport Games going forward, and frankly we can’t wait to start getting into the details ourselves! However, as is always the case with business transactions of this type, paperwork takes time, perhaps even a little longer than we initially anticipated ourselves, however expect more news on the finalization of the purchase in the very near future – then we can start finalizing our strategy and sharing more exciting information with you as the months progress! 

Screen Space Reflections (SSR) In Development

This is something we have been excited to bring into rFactor 2 for quite a while now, and once we have fully integrated this technique into the simulation we expect it should produce a nice visual uplift to how we replicate environment reflections – especially noticeable in wet weather driving conditions.

For those of you who are perhaps less familiar with the term Screen Space Reflections, simply put it enables us to achieve real time reflections on the road surface – essentially reflecting objects based on what can be seen at any given time in situations such as damp or fully wet track surface conditions. Currently the content team have to manually associate objects with a relevant reflective plane, however with the introduction of SSR real time calculations, any given scene will be able to identify where objects should be reflected and produce the desired effect upon the reflecting surface – producing significantly better quality environment reflections and enabling reflections from a much further distance to be generated and displayed within the sim.

Although this will of course show itself most prominently in wet track conditions, the introduction of SSR also allows us the opportunity to produce much improved reflection quality over what is currently possible within the title, and also opens up opportunities for us to produce reflective surfaces on circuits with considerable elevation changes, something that was previously impossible before the introduction of SSR.

While we are certainly excited about this new feature introduction, we are aware that we need this to work across multiple different time of day and weather scenarios within the sim, and without having a significant cost to the frame rate performance of the title on a variety of different hardware configurations. With that in mind, we are planning to run a substantial number of tests and iterations of the technology before we consider it fit for a new Release Candidate build, so don’t expect this to be brought into a public version of rFactor 2 in the immediate few weeks ahead, as we continue to test and refine our implementation within the private beta build of the software behind the scenes. That said, we are keen to get it out sooner rather than later, because it does look very cool indeed!

Development Focus For May

While much work is still ongoing behind the scenes, not least of which is the previous mentioned SSR implementation, we also want to keep a very firm eye on some of the things we can fix and improve in the short term within rFactor 2. Of course, we have many varied paths of development we could take in the next few weeks that have a tangible benefit to the sim, however as is always the case with software development of any kind a good portion of the task is to understand where we should place our development resource to give back the most benefit to both the community itself, and the long term health and progress of the simulation.

Alongside our drive to identify, validate and rectify some of the existing bugs and add new features from the last few builds, we are also very mindful of community feedback telling us that rFactor 2 can be somewhat complex to configure and engage with for new users and existing players. While it is of course a significant undertaking to map out and develop best practice for the entirety of the gameplay experience, we do want to bring some short term solutions to the simulation in order to help our new users setup rFactor 2 and begin their journey with the simulation in the right way.

One of the goals for the coming month has been identified as improving our new user setup experience – getting the player into the simulation, configuring their controls and installing content. With this in mind, we have taken the decision to develop a brand-new ‘First Time Start Up Wizard’ that aims to guide players through the initial configuration phase of the install, and help them choose a curated list of content options to quickly get into the sim – yup you heard that right… gone will be the need to download absolutely every piece of rFactor 2 content on first instal!

Of course, our development of this new setup tool is still very much a work in progress, however in simple terms the idea is to initially guide the player through a setup wizard to calibrate basic hardware such as wheels, pedals and shifters, then present a selection of content instal options to allow the user to select which content they wish to have on first launch. To help guide players through the content choices, we intend to break the content options down into categories that reflect which stage of development these items are at – from ‘recommended’ which represents the latest and greatest rFactor 2 has to offer, to ‘legacy’ items that are perhaps based on older graphical technology. Of course, the player can pick and choose as he or she so wishes, or even elect to download everything and have fun trying them out in the software.

Another aspect of rFactor 2 we wanted to improve upon this month is how the UI handles multiplayer server lists. We’ve heard loud and clear from our community the desire to irradiate UI blocking when waiting for favourite servers to load or even when reviewing the full servers list. At the point of launch for the new UI, this was a feature hard coded into the system, which presented a significant amount of work to remove in such a way as to retain stability in the way servers are displayed. That said, we have begun to invest the time and resource into both removing the requirement to wait for favourite servers to load, whilst also adding the possibility to load server lists (Internet, LAN, Favourites, Friends) asynchronously. What this means in reality is, players no longer have the waiting message load up and block the UI on the Race tab, and should you click on the multiplayer tab the servers list will load servers in such a way that you can see the list populating, and engage with the list even before it has fully loaded – introducing a much reduced wait time when looking to take rFactor 2 online.

Still on the topic of multiplayer servers, we also have the intention of adding some further sorting options to the multiplayer list, adding in the option to sort by version type to help with ease of use for players who run different build versions of rFactor 2. Additional to this, we also plan to add a server password memory function – allowing your install to remember server passwords and removing the need to re-enter login credentials each time you wish to join a server. These changes are being designed with the intention of improving the user experience for our players, and hopefully reducing the amount of time it takes to get in and do what we all come to rFactor 2 to do – go out on track and race!

As these changes are designed to improve the user experience for the players, we have also resolved to look at the possibility of adding more functionality for server administrators too. We are acutely aware that many communities chose to use rFactor 2 for their league racing endeavours, and although we still have plenty of features we wish to bring into the software to ease server admins lives going forward, some of the more immediate improvements we hope to put together in the very near future include the ability to add spectators to the player list when in race monitor, with functions brought into the sim to give admins the rights to kick/ban spectators via the same process as kicking/banning an active player. Furthermore, we also intend to introduce the ability to run server admin commands using Steam IDs, which should help ease the current process of hosting online servers.

Another key element of online racing, either in a league or quick race multiplayer environment, is the ability for users to proudly display their own custom or downloaded liveries. Since the introduction of the refreshed UI in rFactor 2 this feature has taken something of a back seat, however we are currently in the process of reinvigorating and refreshing how skin transfers are handled within the UI, with much improved performance and functionality set to be introduced in the near future. We are looking to offer up a much simplified and clearer progress bar and status icons around skin transfers, although this enhancement is still very much in the early stages of development, we expect it should vastly improve how skin transfers are handled within the simulation.

Moving away from online play, we are also looking to bring some very robust improvements for our loyal and talented modding teams out within the community. One such example is set to be the addition of new AI editor methods designed to improve how modders can update and improve Cut Corridors within their track creations. These new changes are set to include Finding, Normalizing, Setting to Corridor values, Setting to Collision Corridor values as well as setting if adjusting Corridors effects Cut Corridors, which we hope should empower the many talented modders out in the community to create even better and more realistic AI behaviour on their track creations.

Speaking of tracks, recently our community have reported a bug with how the software wrongly closes loops on point-to-point tracks such as rally stages and drift roads – this has already been reviewed and fixed and should appear in the next Release Candidate build! Thank you to those who reported this issue, and of course the other issues that are reported by our users – needless to say we see and hear your communications and endeavour to address each and every one of them within the simulation as development progresses.

Another aspect that we think should help improve the playing experience of a selection of our users centres around how light flares are represented on Ultra-Wide and Triple Screen setups. We’ve noted that on these hardware configurations recent updates have produced an unrealistic visual experience when the sun is low in the sky and directly impacting the view of a driver. Although only a subtle visual discrepancy, our development team are working hard back at base to review, update and improve how light flare effects are represented on these type of screen configurations, and early testing suggests the changes under development produce a significant and much more realistic effect, one that we are sure will be well-received by our community in terms of increasing the visual immersion of the gameplay in rFactor 2. 

Of course, the above text is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of things we are currently working on here at the studio – we most certainly have plenty more development goodies up our sleeve either in active development or planned for the near future, however we wanted to take the opportunity within this roadmap to give you a little taste of some of the things that are more towards the forefront of our development plans. It would be fair to say that each and every member of the Studio 397 team are immensely proud of the work we undertake with rFactor 2, and the journey that we are all collectively on – be it at Studio or within the community. Although we all want more things to happen sooner, we are on a strong development trajectory now, and we have plenty of exciting things lined up for the short, medium and long term plans of the simulation.

Looking further at the player experience,we also have intentions to look at various aspects of the overlay within the sim, adding things such as gear data and RPM for the speedometer, driver name options drop down to overlay control panel and updated overlay elements to use it, plus looking into broadcast overlay issues that have been reported recently by the community. This will be an ongoing process as we add more information and features, and fine tune those that already exist, so stay tuned for that as development progresses. 

On a final note before we move on to the next topic in this April Development Roadmap, we have put quite a bit of work in behind the scenes to ensure our peripheral support tools are in place and up to date for some of the most popular sim racing devices. Having undergone substantial review and testing, we expect that the next build of rFactor 2 should contain updated driver support for Fanatec and Thrustmaster hardware – and a whole load of other fixes, changes, additions and improvements!

Release Candidate Deployment Strategy

As you will likely have noticed, it has been a while now since we last deployed a ‘Release Candidate’ build of rFactor 2 into the main public branch of the simulation. In the early days of our new Release Candidate strategy we had plenty of smaller yet still very important fixes and improvements that we could work through relatively quickly – which meant that we found ourselves in a position to quite rapidly develop, test and release new RC builds to Steam and fairly quickly afterwards update those to the main build of rFactor 2, whilst simultaneously deploying a new Release Candidate for users to opt-in and check out while we ensure it is suitable to push to the main stable build of the software. 

Delighted as we are about the speed of which we initially managed to put together new build releases, we’ve now moved to the stage where much more substantial changes are being developed for the latest builds, and as such these have considerably higher levels of complexity and development lead time – which inevitably has to slow down the process while we build upon the initial base changes and get them into a stage where we feel confident to deploy to a new Release Candidate. Despite this slowing down of new build updates, we’ve still made sure that the current RC available to the public receives updates when certain issues are identified, such as the recent replay stutter problems that some have you have reported, Essentially what this means is that the current RC will be yet further refined when it transfers to the main branch, and our new Release Candidate build that is currently in development will feature some pretty sizeable improvements over the current version of rFactor 2…

As has become standard practice in recent months, we currently have four distinct public branches of rFactor 2 for players choose from. These are as follows:

• Opt-Out’ – This is the main public build of rFactor 2, without any beta branches or additional early updates applied. This is the build that will be available as default.
• Release-Candidate – This build will always feature the latest updates and improvements that have been introduced by our development team ahead of main public release. Although these changes will have been reviewed by our test team here at Studio 397 prior to deployment, we will use this build branch to give our users the opportunity to opt into these changes early, and report any unexpected issues that may or may not occur before we launch to the main public ‘opt-out’ branch of the software.
• Previous-Build – Our new ‘previous-build’ branch will contain a copy of the last public ‘opt-out’ version of rFactor 2, prior to updates being deployed, should any communities need to revert to the last known stable branch of the software for any reason.
• Old UI – Depreciated build of rFactor 2 featuring the old UI – this build will no longer be updated.

Our current ‘Release Candidate’ build has been active since first deploying back on March 4th (update notes here). As mentioned previously in this roadmap, the current RC build has taken longer than normal to move towards a main public release as we continue to fine tune some of the aspects of the build, and as we further develop the next Release Candidate update that is currently being worked on behind closed doors. 

Right from the off, the intention of our Release Candidate strategy was to both offer players access to new features and bug fixes earlier, and also stress test the build with a larger collection of our userbase to help identify any areas of improvement or bug fixing that would be required before we can safely move to the main stable branch of the simulation. 

With the current Release Candidate 3 version of rFactor 2, the last few weeks have seen quite a bit of additonal work undertaken by the development team to get to the bottom of some issues with replay stability, namely an unexpected issue that caused minor and major stuttering to take place within both ‘live’ and saved replay action. Following that intiial March build release, we have since released three further complementary hotfix updates to the build in order to rectify both the replay stuttering issue and a fullscreen UI freeze problem, of which the change notes can be found below:

Client 6496645 / Dedicated 6496649

• Fixed replay stuttering with capped frame rate

Client 6532194 / Dedicated 6532199

• Fixed sporadic freeze of the UI in fullscreen mode

Client 6541710 / Dedicated 6541716

• Fixed replay stuttering

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our thanks to those within the community who have elected to opt in to these Release Candidate builds, and to thank you all for the valuable testing and feedback we have received during this process. We cannot stress enough how important it is to the ongoing development of the simulation to receive this level of engagement from our fantastic community- each report and reproduction steps your share with us helps us all to collectively work on identifying and improving the simulation for all of our players, which in the long term will help us reach our goals faster and more efficiently, and deliver to everyone the simulation experience we all know rFactor 2 is capable of producing. Thank you to everyone for your support with this so far, we really do appreciate it. 

Lime Rock Park PBR Update 

Last month we suggested the big Lime Rock Park PBR update should be in a position to release in April…. having learnt the hard way not to make timing predictions in public, we’ve unfortunately not quite managed to squeeze in the new update this month due to various changing priorities and the need to lavish just that bit more love and attention to the track before it is deployed as an update to the free Lime Rock Park circuit on the Steam Workshop. If you are one of the many players keen to sample the updated version of this wonderful little American venue, worry not it is still very much on the radar and hasn’t been forgotten – just a little more patience is needed, and you will soon be ripping up the tarmac on one of the finest road course tracks in the US. Having learnt not to fall into the release date prediction trap I’m not about to do the same again here, however it shouldn’t be too far away now…

New Track Development Update – Reveal Next Month

In the last Development Roadmap posting we teased the fact some of our Track Team colleagues have been out with the laserscanning equipment taking tons of awesome images for our next scratch built track in rFactor 2. At the time we cautioned that the wait to see this new track in action is likely to be a lengthy one, as at the time of writing the team were still very much in the process of sorting the hundreds of GB of data, images and videos into some kind of meaningful order.. Well that bit has been done, and the track artists are already hard at work putting together the first early stages of this new venue into the sim – for me personally its been fascinating to see how much work and attention to detail goes into these things behind the scenes. If the previews and chatter I’ve seen so far is anything to go by, this should be one of the best tracks we’ve produced for the simulation so far! 

With all this said, much as we’ve enjoyed reading the rampant speculation on Discord as to which track it is we’ve been working on, we don’t quite feel ready to reveal the identity of the track to you all just yet – most likely timing for that will be in and around the next Roadmap at the end of May for an identity reveal. However, seeing as much of the world is starting to take tentative steps to opening back up again, and travel is becoming possible for many of us – including limited attendance at motor racing events, one thing we will say is we’ve left a pretty large rF2 sticker at the track (in a semi-hidden location of course) – so if you are planning to visit any racing events in May, have a good dig around the venue and see if you can find the sticker and identify the track – I’ll buy a cookie to the first one to find it and post a photo on our Discord channel!

Looking Back on April 

As usual, the month that is about to pass has been another one of great satisfaction here at Studio 397, with plenty of work behind the scenes having taken place as we continue to push forward and develop our beloved simulation. Unlike in previous months however, much of the progress made has been behind closed doors, the fruits of which we should be able to share in the near future, so on face value we have a little less than usual to look back on this month – something that I’m pretty confident we should be able to make up for as we start to reach the summer months in mainland Europe. 

Without further ado, let’s have a look at the release highlights from the month of April 2021.

Silverstone, Portland and Indianapolis Update

rFactor 2 Additional Content | Steam Workshop: Click HERE

You may have noticed that we’ve recently been pushing to bring a number of updates to our existing content within rFactor 2, from larger full PBR refresh builds to smaller fixes, tweaks and improvements to the newer content without our existing portfolio. As I’m sure you can image, this is a rather time consuming and labour intensive process, however I think you would agree that the reward of bringing our existing content offering up to the standards of recent releases is well worth this additional workload – although as with the case of Lime Rock Park, things don’t always hit the schedule we initially anticipated! 

During April, we have managed to review and update a trio of our popular free circuits in rFactor 2. All three of these tracks already feature PBR technology, either from initial release or updates deployed further down the line, however we still had a few areas upon which we wished to focus some further attention, and the release deployed back on April 1st went some way towards adding that final bit of polish to these very popular racing venues. 

All three tracks can be downloaded at no additional cost on the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop – and feature regularly in the rFactor 2 Competition System within the main simulation UI.

Silverstone Grand Prix V2.12

• Fixed: Starter Worker animation under Safety Car.
• Minor Balance Updates.
• Fixed: an issue where a camera was blocked by a digital flag.
• Fixed: some digital flag uvw issues.
• Fixed: Closed gaps around pit in detection.
• Fixed: Start Flag Marshal animation under safety car.
• Fixed: Pit Official animations.

Portland International Raceway V1.06

• Fixed: Starter Worker Animation under Safety Car.
• Fixed: Issue with default mapper at night on No Chicane Layout.
• Fixed: Pit Official numbering.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway V1.09

• Fixed: Starter Worker animation under Safety Car
• Reduced size of curb GP layout T6
• Fixed: Various Collision Issues
• Reduced noise on road surface
• Regenerated all real road rubber profiles

RCCO eX Zero 2021 Hotfix Update

eX ZERO 2021 | Steam Store: Click HERE

Earlier this month we spent a little time looking into some feedback from our latest electric racer – the potent RCCO eX ZERO 2021. The car first released back in December 2020 as a new paid DLC for rFactor 2, and since that time we have taken the opportunity to revisit this pretty special machine and add a few further features and visual improvements. As many of you will know, the car has been well-received by the sim racing community since launch, and features in a number of high profile esport racing championships, the highest profile of which is of course the official RCCO eX World Championship – a series that features a number of big name real world and esport racing drivers and teams, with a worldwide television broadcast package supporting the series. 

With so many talented drivers and engineers involved in using the car on a regular basis, we have received plenty of valuable feedback in these last few months as to how the eX ZERO 2021 behaves in racing conditions, and how it can be improved yet further to increase the racing spectacle. Churning the numbers back at base against the feedback we received, we recently deployed a new hotfix update that both increases the positive effect of slipstream behaviour when following another car, and also reduces the undesirable effect of ‘dirty air’ that washes off the lead opponent. 

These changes have moved the car to version 1.39 release status, and have been available to owners of the eX ZERO 2021 since release on Wednesday 21st April

RCCO eX Zero 2021 v1.39

• Significant reduction in dirty air
• Stronger slip stream and stronger draft

Diriyah and Rome Formula E Updates

Rome Formula E | Steam Store: Click Here

Diriyah Formula E | Steam Store: Click Here

Our two most recent official Formula E street circuits, the Rome and Diriyah Formula E venues underwent minor hotfix updates during April, with the track team here at Studio 397 spending some further time tweaking and refining these two very challenging, and visually stunning city street tracks.

Although both updates are only quite minor in size, it is nevertheless important to us to continue to monitor and improve our content within rFactor 2 to help ensure the best playing experience for our players, and address issues that have either been reported by the community, or have arisen from our own further testing and driving post release. 

Of course, this update has automatically deployed to all current owners of the tracks, and will be available as the latest version for anyone who purchases either the Rome E-Prix or Diriyah E-Prix circuits from the rFactor 2 Steam Store.  

Diriyah E-Prixv1.03

• Fixed Camera Clipping at Final Turn

Rome E-Prixv1.07

• Fixed flag mapping issues
• Improved Tree Textures
• Improved Real Road materials
• Slight adjustments to some buildings
• Fine-tuned static and ambient mapper placement
• Fixed terrain gaps
• General scene optimization

Competition System

Although still firmly within the beta stages of development, we continue to see many positive trends with player engagement in our Competition System within rFactor 2, especially some of the valuable feedback we continue to receive on the many styles and formats of racing and qualification sessions that we continue to prototype during this beta development phase. As well as the actual system itself, we are delighted to see the ongoing interest from our community around what we have planned in the short, medium and long term future of the Competition System – something that we are sure holds a lot of exciting potential for new and existing players alike. 

In order to try and keep everyone as informed and up-to-date as possible on our development plans, and to gather your fantastic feedback and suggestions to help us turn this Competition System into something that helps everyone get more enjoyment from the simulation, we are pleased to note the continued engagement from many of you with our Competition System blog postings. As we push forward with developing the Competition System we may experience larger gaps between updates, while we fine tune some of the larger areas of the system, as such we’ve taken the decision to move the blog post onto a 2-week release cycle from now on – although we will certainly consider releasing special posts around the time of any new updates that fall outside of this release cycle.

If you missed any of our posts from April, fear not, you can find links to the respective updates below: 

• Week 13 – https://www.studio-397.com/2021/04/competition-system-blog-week-13/
• Week 14 – https://www.studio-397.com/2021/04/competition-system-blog-week-14/

In terms of the Competition System itself, this month would see the addition of some new and pretty well-received series for our drivers to enjoy. We’ve found that GT3 continues to be a strong draw for sim racers in any simulation, and our rFactor 2 community are certainly no exception to this rule, with plenty of close racing having taken place over the last four months. During April, we also introduced the mighty Nissan GT500 and McLaren MP4/13 Grand Prix car into the service, with some epic racing in both very, very different machines having played out over recent weeks – we certainly hope you continue to enjoy these cars and the many other future additions coming to the Competition System this May!

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

Mat is once again set to be a bumper month of virtual racing on the rFactor 2 platform. Open wheelers, endurance racers, tin tops and more are set to hit the virtual tarmac over the next few weeks – and to help you keep track on some of the best esport racing broadcasts in rFactor 2, as ever please find below some select highlights to look forward to over the next month: 

Monday 3rd May | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 3rd May | 20:00 CEST |  GT PRO Powered by TraxionGG  Round 5 | TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Saturday 8th May | 17:00 CEST | Virtual Endurance Championship 8h of Spa |  VEC YouTube

Monday 10th May | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Series Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Friday 15th May | 14:00 CEST | GTR24H of Nürburgring | GTR24h YouTube

Sunday 16th | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 6 |  FSR YouTube

Monday 17th May | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 17th May | 20:00 CEST | GT PRO Powered by TraxionGG Round 6 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 24th May | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Series Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Thursday 27th May | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 4 |  Motorsport.TV

Sunday 30th May | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 7 |  FSR YouTube

That’s all for this month, we hope you enjoyed our latest Development Roadmap, and we look forward to seeing you all out on the virtual racetracks of rFactor 2 !

Roadmap day! 

Happy end of the month everyone – another four weeks of intense activity logged and complete here at Studio 397 as we prepare to say goodbye to month three of 2021, and edge ever closer to those long awaited and much anticipated warmer days of summer. 

Already we have enjoyed a very strong opening to the year here at the studio, with plenty of new content, fresh build updates and improvements to existing content releases – but we most certainly don’t intend to let our collective foot off the gas anytime soon – far from it in fact. 

Now I’m pretty sure you will have seen our big announcement at the start of the month relating to the impending purchase of Studio 397 by our colleagues at Motorsport Games. Understandably, this is a major development for the team here at Studio 397 and something we are extremely excited about as we look to ramp up the progress we have made with rFactor 2 in recent years. Not only will the joining together of these two companies help to strengthen our long time future here at the studio, but without doubt the ability to tap into the substantial resources of Motorsport Games will certainly help in our quest to accelerate the future prospects of rFactor 2 and the many other projects we at Studio 397 continue to be involved with on a day-to-day basis. 

rFactor 2 to be Acquired By Motorsport Games | More Details: Click Here.

I’m sure that the community will have plenty of questions about how this acquisition will impact the short, medium and long term of the team and software, and we will of course communicate with the wider public about this new ownership arrangement when it is appropriate, but rest assured that now more than ever work continues apace back in the studio as we continue our mission to deliver the best sim racing experience possible to our awesome community, and with that in mind, let us take a look at what to expect from the immediate future of rFactor 2, and a few select highlights from the month of March.

Bug Fixes, New Builds & The Quest For Improvement

This past four weeks we have continued our recent push to with the development of rFactor 2 and address some important issues within the simulation that need further exploring and rectifying before we can start adding new and improved features to the software. As has been the case in the last couple of months, we have continued with our new policy of hosting four distinct build branches of the simulation on Steam. ‘Opt Out’ remains our current public stable build of rFactor 2 and is the default, ‘Release Candidate’ is a build containing our latest improvements that the community can choose to download and offer feedback, ‘Previous Release’ is a copy of the last stable build of the simulation prior to the most recent changes and ‘Old UI’ is a now depreciated build of rFactor 2 that retains the old UI functionality of the sim, but will not be subject to any future updates. These are our public facing builds, however we also have a selection of private versions of the simulation for our internal testing, one of which, our ‘Beta’ rFactor 2 already contains a healthy number of fixes that we will be looking to move to ‘Release Candidate’ status in the very near future. 

Within this Beta build, several areas of rFactor 2 have been reviewed and worked on by our development team here at Studio 397, with focus being particularly placed on live stream overlay features and functionality and further UI tweaks. What does this mean in terms of new experiences our players can look forward to in the near future? Well, for starters we are working on adding data for RPM, Speed, Gear and pedal inputs to the driver information live stream overlay (in Release Candidate, these functions are already enabled within the in game replay function), plus new overlay elements and other graphical and modding tweaks amongst other changes – of course these are all still very much in development (with more to be added), so we can talk about that again when the latest internal beta build gets closer to Release Candidate status.

‘Release Candidate’ Builds

We are fairly sure that a large proportion of our player base in rFactor 2 elect to stick with the default ‘Opt Out’ version of the simulation when playing the software on a day-to-day basis, however those who do venture into the realms of Release Candidate builds have been presented with a number of fixes, tweaks and improvements to rFactor 2 in recent times – some of the fixes relate to long-standing issues that the community have been keen to see rectified in the sim, and it is greatly pleasing to us here at Studio 397 to be able to finally bring about some of the changes that our community are so eager to see added to the simulation. 

Over the course of March we have deployed a new Release Candidate build of rFactor 2 and a subsequent update expansion that that build, with further refinements and development work being undertaken here at Studio 397 as we get close to pushing this build out to the main latest stable default version of rFactor 2 – the build that the public will have access to as default. 

Latest Release CandidateSteam Build IDs

Client 6133456
Dedicated 6426499 Changelog

• General- Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server
• Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting.
• Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage
• Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player.
• These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast)
• Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled
• Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers.
• Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned”
• Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles
• Report steam branch and build number on startupHUD- Fixed spacing for weather info in HUDGraphics- Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied.
• Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views
• Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen.
• Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly
• Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online
• Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions
• Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras
• Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens
• Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings
• Updated Environment Reflection Settings
• Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution.
• Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options
• Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen.UI- Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar.
• Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar.
• Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen.
• Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off
• Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer
• Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage
• Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race.
• Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start.
• Improved formatting of time durations.
• Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen
• Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts
• Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screenModding- Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content
• Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load
• Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away.
• Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout
• Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code.

Client 6426498
Dedicated 6426499

General

• Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server
• Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting.
• Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage
• Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player.
• These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast)
• Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled
• Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers.
• Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned”
• Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles
• Report steam branch and build number on startup

HUD

• Fixed spacing for weather info in HUD

Graphics

• Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied.
• Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views
• Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen.
• Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly
• Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online
• Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions
• Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras
• Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens
• Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings
• Updated Environment Reflection Settings
• Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution.
• Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options
• Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen.

UI

• Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar.
• Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar.
• Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen.
• Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off
• Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer
• Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage
• Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race.
• Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start.
• Improved formatting of time durations.
• Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen
• Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts
• Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screen

Modding

• Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content
• Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load
• Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away.
• Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout
• Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code.

Latest Release Candidate 3 (Hotfix)

Client 6438124
Dedicated 6438127

• Fixed an issue where Steam had to be open to start a Dedicated Server

As soon as this new update is transferred to the ‘Opt Out’ version of rFactor 2, we will of course bring another brand-new Release Candidate build into the Steam page of rFactor 2 – this is the new update we are currently working on behind the scenes. With so many different build status updates currently in play for the simulation, and with such a rich and sizeable collection of content too as both DLC and free additions to the software, we are also working on a new and all-encompassing page on the Studio 397 website, which will quickly and easily list the last build release notes (for both Opt Out and Release Candidate), and will show what content is available for the simulation in a quick and easy to identify format – including which packs they are a part of, and direct links to purchase / download the content. This is something we are working on behind the scenes, with a view to getting this useful new information page out into the public domain over the next couple of months. 

As we continue to push forward with our development of rFactor 2, we again want to thank our loyal community for engaging on our various Discord and forum channels with suggestions and bug reports – rest assured that these reports and posts are noted by us here at Studio 397, and each bug the community tell us about is recorded, tested, verified and presented to the development team for review and repair in a future build. We would obviously love to rectify more bugs and issues at a quicker rate than is possible now, but the reality of the complexity of the software and the resource available to us is that we must prioritize issues with a view to the longer term development goals of rFactor 2. If you have reported something, and it hasn’t yet be resolved fully, worry not, we will get to it in due course as we continue to push onwards with reaching the potential we all know is firmly in the grasp of the simulation. 

Busy Scanning Tarmac

Apologies in advance for this, but we are excited about a new track we are working on, yet don’t quite want to give away what it is yet so this will have to be a teaser of sorts with more news to follow in the future. Over the course of the last week, colleagues from our track team here at Studio 397 have been rather lucky in the fact they had an opportunity to travel to a particularly wonderful racing venue to carry out some important work. Yes, restrictions are still in place, travel is still pretty challenging and swabs still need to be pushed up noses and down throats in order to be deemed safe to move, but that didn’t stop the team enjoying a couple of days in the sunshine with a laserscanning team, several cameras, more batteries than needed to power a real car and a couple of drones for good measure. The footage and data that the team have brought back home with them is impressive indeed, and the rest of our colleagues here at Studio aren’t jealous of their travels at all… honestly!

So, what track is it I hear you all scream… well, like we said we aren’t quite ready to give that information away just yet, however we can categorically confirm it is not Daytona, so please allow that meme on the Discord channel to die off once and for all! What we can say is this is very much an AAA circuit, is located in Europe, always proves popular with fans and racers alike (in both real and virtual worlds) and should be a good match for much of the content available within rFactor 2. Sadly we will end the clues at that, and with a firm reminder that we literally only scanned it last week, so it is going to take a huge amount of work to sift through the data and get everything together before we even think about beginning to start building the track – so don’t expect it out for purchase in the immediate future – this is more one to look forward to towards the middle or end of 2021. 

KartSim – Massive PBR Update Coming Soon

KartSim | rFactor 2 Steam Store: Click Here.

March is set to see a bumper new update for the popular KartSim DLC available within rFactor 2. Featuring a selection of highly realistic racing karts and laserscanned circuits, KartSim offers the purest of racing experiences within the rFactor 2 platform – and March will see a major new overhaul of the content with PBR graphics updates joining fixes and improvements to the content itself. We are really excited to see how the community reacts to these new changes, and can’t wait to get them out to you in the very near future indeed. Stay tuned to the Studio 397 website for more information, and to our social media channels for release date news and previews in the very near future. 

Giving Some Love to Older Content

Recent months have seen one or two track updates to existing circuits within rFactor 2, and that work certainly continues as we look to apply the PBR treatment to our older crop of virtual racing arenas within the simulation. However, whilst tracks are certainly a very important aspect of the overall experience within rFactor 2, we also acknowledge that several really cool cars are sat in our Steam Workshop and could do with a lick of PBR encrusted paint and some Studio 397 love to bring them back up to the standards now expected with more recent content releases. With this in mind, and frankly as firm fans of the car ourselves, we have made it our ambition to revisit the mighty little USF2000 and give it a bit of a refresh. Now some of you will likely remember this American open wheel racer from when we first released it as free content within rFactor 2 back in – believe it or not – 2016. Low powered, minimal downforce, bags of fun to drive and to race, this free addition to rFactor 2 quickly established itself as a favourite amongst our virtual racers within the simulation. 

USF2000 | rFactor 2 Steam Workshop: Click Here.

Although the car certainly doesn’t look out of place in comparison to more recent cars, we acknowledge that work does need to be done to the vehicle in order to step up the overall experience and quality in line with recent content releases – and hopefully if all goes to plan the month of April should see the fruits of those labours, with both a PBR visual refresh and some further refinements to the physics and actual driving experience of these little beauties. Hopefully, a mini USF2000 revival within our player base will quickly follow on the heels of this update!

Track Updates

Warming to the subject of content improvements, although we have many more update projects in the works behind the scenes at various stages of completion, with tomorrow set to see updates deployed to the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit, Portland International Raceway track and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway configurations within rFactor 2. These updates will not be as sizeable as a full PBR refresh, as all of these tracks are already to the latest graphical standards. Once these updates roll out into the public build of rFactor 2, we are turning our attention to the finalisation and testing of another big PBR update, this time for the beautiful Lime Rock Park circuit in the United States. The new build should be deployed to our testing team in the next week or so, and depending on any significant issues that crop up with the latest refresh and the final few tweaks and amendments all is in order and should be quite close to when we are ready to release. We don’t have an exact timeframe on when this update will be made available to the public, as things can (and often do) spring up the odd surprise, however it should be reasonably safe to assume we can get this out during the month ahead. 

Looking Back On March

Now we’ve taken a good look at some selected highlights of things that are in the works and coming to the simulation in the very near future, we now reach the part of the roadmap where we spend a little time reflecting on what we’ve achieved during the month just gone. In our latest ‘looking back on…’ segment, we reflect on new pieces of content, improvements to existing tracks within the simulation, review the latest Competition System musings from Marcel and point your attention to a few interesting rFactor 2 esports broadcasts that will be running over the next four weeks. 

New Content Releases – Diriyah and Rome Formula E

Formula E | Diriyah E-Prix Steam Store: Click Here

March would see the introduction of two brand-new street circuit locations to the simulation, the very fast and technical layouts of Diriyah in Saudi Arabia and Italy’s Rome E-Prix tracks – both of which afford drivers a thrilling and challenging driving experience in either the Formula E cars within the sim, or frankly any car in our wide and expansive library of content (disclaimer – Prototype cars are a bit too fast!). Both of these new tracks have been created from scratch by the rFactor 2 track development team, and both represent the latest graphical technology available within the simulation. 

Formula E | Gen2 Formula E Car Steam Store: Click Here. 

We are of course delighted to continue what is proving to be a very close and successful relationship with Formula E for these two new tracks, and to have no-less than six official circuits from the real world ABB Formula E FIA World Championship, plus the Formula E Test Track is something that brings immense pride to us here at the studio, and is a clear sign of just how far rFactor 2 has come in recent years to be trusted with such an important and high profile licence as the Formula E agreement represents. 

In terms of the tracks themselves, it would be fair to say that these two circuits are arguably the most challenging of the six Formula E tracks we have in the simulation so far. Proximity to the walls lining the track are pretty much a given in the world of Formula E racing, but something that these two venues have over the majority of the calendar is the sheer speed one can reach in a modern Formula E car – with corners that demand an incredible amount of commitment, bravery and more often than not a fair slice of luck thrown into the mix. 

Formula E | Rome E-Prix Steam Store: Click Here

Formula E Content Updates

Formula E Content Updates | March 16th: Click Here.

Not content with adding two new Formula E city circuits to the simulation during March, we also took the opportunity this month to revisit our existing Formula E offerings to tidy up a few loose ends that have become apparent since the tracks first released on the simulation over the last year or two. More a ‘quality of life’ improvement than adding significant changes or updates, we are nevertheless still very pleased to see how well these exciting city street circuits stand up in rFactor 2 – offering some of the visually most impressive content within the title while at the same time producing a great driving experience in both the official Formula E content within the sim, and if our Discord community is anything to go by, also with a selection of lower powered open wheel and tin top cars. 

New Free Content – StockCar 2018x Released

Stock Car 2018x Release | March 23rd: Click Here.

From the ultra-modern electric power of Formula E to the brute force grunt and go of American style stock cars, March would see an exciting addition to our tin top collection with the release of the new Stock Car 2018x carset to the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop. Developed with slightly less power than the current Stock Car 2018 machines, but featuring improved handling characteristics, brand new audio mixes, changes to the physics behaviour and a new visual style thanks to the updated livery designs and front facing grills, these cars are absolutely incredible to experience in either oval or road course configuration, really adding a new dynamic to the simulation and a driving experience that can be enjoyed by veterans of the title or newcomers alike. The Stock Car 2018x pack comes complete with three different model types available in both road and oval configurations, and each with their own new liveries and unique body shapes thanks to the new front grill designs. That said, it is intended to add a new 3D model to these cars at some point in the future, however an estimated date for this update has yet to be confirmed.

Fun On The Streets Of Azur – New Circuit d’Azur AI Update

Circuit d’Azur AI Update | March 24th: Click Here

The beautiful Circuit d’Azur also received an update during this month, with plenty of time allocated to our AI drivers to learn the many variables of racing on such a demanding street circuit. We used the last few weeks to revisit this DLC circuit and clean up a few items that needed additional attention post release, improving various collision meshes around the circuit, updating no rain zones, regenerating Real Road profiles and other required maintenance items that have been identified in the time since the circuit first released. Useful and needed as these changes have been, without doubt the highlight from the most recent build has to be the improvements we’ve managed to put together for the AI behaviour on this demanding circuit. Of course, with such a varied collection of cars that are available within rFactor 2 at present, not least of which is the added variable of modded content outside of our control, it was always going to be a challenge to develop AI behaviour to avoid wall contact, remain fast enough to present a challenge, race well in a pack and race hard against the player – but we do feel that this latest track build has produced a considerable improvement to the player experience on the Circuit d’Azur – one we hope you’ve been enjoying since the update released back on March 24th.

Competition System

March has been another very informative month for our competition system beta within rFactor 2, as once again we have seen a very interesting and wide-ranging selection of questions from our community – questions that we have done our best to answer as thoroughly as possible in our weekly Competition System blog postings. As always, we remain incredibly grateful to our community for their continued interest and engagement with both the competition system itself, and the interest around what we have planned and in development for the immediate future of this exciting addition to rFactor 2. 

If you missed any of our recent postings, worry not, we’ve taken the opportunity to link them below for your reading pleasure…

• Week 11
• Week 12

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

As ever, we have a packed month of esport racing events taking place in April, from our own thoroughly exciting GT Pro and GT Challenge categories continuing into their third and fourth events of the season, to some awesome adventures in the BMW CS Racing Cup car and plemty more besides, with quite a few other high profile community events being held during the coming weeks too. 

In order to help you keep track of some highlight events next month, check out a few of these races to see exactly our amazing rFactor 2 drivers are capable of delivering:

Thursday 1st April | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 2 | Various

Sunday 4th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 3 | FSR YouTube

Monday 5th April | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 5th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Saturday 10th April | 16:50 CEST | Virtual Endurance Championship Round 7 | VEC YouTube

Sunday 11th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 4 | FSR YouTube

Monday 12th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 19th April |19:00 CEST | BMW SIM Round 4 |  rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 19th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 4  | TraxionGG YouTube / TraxionGG YouTube

Sunday 25th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 5 | FSR YouTube

Monday 26th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 4 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 29th April | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 3 | Various

As always, thank you for taking the time to keep up-to-date with the latest happenings here at the studio. Don’t forget you can join the conversation over on our ever expanding rFactor 2 Discord channel for instant chat with fellow fans of the simulation, and stay safe, stay healthy and see you out on the virtual circuit soon!